Top Things To Do This Weekend: July 25–27

Where to go, who to see, and what to do

Thanks to the annual H–Town Sneaker Summit—yes, we have one, and it’s celebrating its 10th anniversary this month—the Bayou City is at the foot-fetish forefront. First held as an informal gathering at an internet cafe, the HSS soon expanded to bars, then concert venues, then the Toyota Center. These days, it attracts crowds up to 6,000 strong to the Venue Formerly Known as Reliant Center (rechristened the NRG Center in March).

On the night of July 5, 2000, Lacy Johnson, a college student from a rural Midwestern family, was lured to the apartment of her ex-boyfriend, who imprisoned her in a soundproofed room, raped her, and threatened to kill her. How she escaped the apartment, and how she struggled to reassemble her life—going on to earn a PhD from the UH Creative Writing Program—are the subject of Johnson’s raw, poetic new memoir.

Last year, Houston's long-running LGBT film festival continued to expand outside the loop, adding screenings at the Galveston Artist Residency and the Alamo Drafthouse Vintage Park as well as more traditional locations like the MFAH and the Rice Cinema. The 18th annual festival features approximately 50 films from around the world.

To city slickers like us, the real question might be, “Is there life in Lubbock?” According to this show’s three creators and Lubbock natives—actor Jaston Williams (one half of the Greater Tuna team) and musicians Joe Ely and Jo Carol Pierce—the answer is “Yes, and it’s damn funny.” The performance mixes storytelling, poetry, and music, and involves extensive audience participation.

Born in Montgomery, Alabama in 1919, Nat King Cole began performing at the age of four, started taking piano lessons at 12, and embarked on a jazz career while still a teenager, soon becoming one of the world’s most famous musicians. This play brings Cole’s colorful life to the stage in a production directed by the legendary Lou Bellamy, founder of St. Paul’s Penumbra Theatre Company, considered the country’s foremost African American theater.